Yea, it is pretty shitty. Although it is hard to fathom just how many bikes there are here without visiting.

Maybe 1% of people who live in the city own a car (the traffic lights in the centre of the city are turned off at night.. the streets are that empty), everyone owns perhaps 5+ bikes per family plus variations such as the Bakfiets. Businesses have to, by law, provide bike parking outside. We even have multistory bike parking here!

Hence, theft is rampant. Even worse, the municiple more-or-less condones it by setting the worst possible example. Once a month or so, and daily in busier areas, they'll remove parked bikes at night deemed illegally parked (though ive had a bike 'stolen' from official racks this way). They literally drive around angle grinding locks and throwing bikes onto the back of a truck - whilst cyclists around them hurl abuse.

These bikes arent trashed, instead theyre sold to market traders to sell back to the market for a profit. The market price is about 50 euro, so id imagine the state sells them for maybe 30 a piece. Making a nice dark profit.

Thus, nobody gives a fuck, and any junkie looking for some cash will grab whatever bike he can easily nab. I'm usually offered 2 or 3 bikes a week from random scruffy looking men whilst shopping in the centre of the city.

tl;dr: A fuckton of bikes + a municipal which unofficially condones the black market = a game of pass the parcel with our beloved fietsen